How A Brand Evolution Drove A Cultural Transformation

One of the most common responsibilities CMOs have is the management of the brand, including, when appropriate, activities designed to strengthen and evolve a brand. When done correctly, the shift of a brand positioning drives product, service, and experience design, in addition to the commercialization (i.e., communication and selling) of the changes. And when done really well, a shift in the brand drives a cultural transformation from the inside out. To better understand how this is done in a B2B context, I talked with Josh London, CMO of IDG, the world’s largest tech media company.

Kimberly Whitler: Can you begin with a brief overview of IDG so that everyone can understand the challenge facing you as you began your brand transformation?

Josh London: IDG is the world’s largest technology, media, data and marketing services company. We reach technology buyers across the spectrum, from CIOs and CTOs all the way to tech enthusiasts. On the media side, we own and operate hundreds of websites focused on tech in 97 countries. Outside of the U.S., we have roughly 180 magazines. We also produce more than 700 events a year. On the data side, we have exclusive first-party data that gives you more granular insight across the globe than anybody else, enabling us to identify “smaller needles in larger haystacks.” This data provides a unique picture of purchasing intent, which we employ across digital campaigns, account-based marketing campaigns and demand-generation. Our marketing services division creates award-winning custom content marketing and research programs for clients around the world.

Whitler: You recently did a lot of work to evolve your brand positioning. Why did you do this?

London: As a very large, global company with a number of different divisions, we found that customers knew more about our individual brands and not about the suite of solutions. Part of the problem was that there hadn’t been a centralized CMO, so each individual business unit operated independently. And while we had several businesses that could help solve client needs, our firm didn’t always have the structure in place to sell across business units.

I knew IDG because I had competed against them for 15 years at four different companies. I thought I had a pretty complete picture of IDG. And as I was approached for this job, I found out that IDG was so much more innovative than I knew from the outside, but we weren’t getting credit for it.

Whitler: Can you walk through the rebranding process?

London: Several insights emerged from our research. Historically, IDG has been a famously decentralized company and one in which culture was paramount. When we started conducting brand research, we interviewed clients, prospects, dissatisfied clients, and employees. One of the things we heard around the world was that we had exceptional representatives—customers thought of our brand as the individual who served them. The insight was that our brand was about individuals and partnership.

Additionally, the interviews provided insight about our opportunities, with three main findings. First, the umbrella brand “IDG” was not well known. When we were known, the view was often out-of-date, rather than the innovative company that we’ve actually become. We were viewed as a complex entity to do with business with, which was driven by the decentralized silos. We realized we had to find a balance between developing a global brand that could work in a more seamless way to solve customer problems while also enabling local customization and maintaining our unique culture.

The second finding was fully understanding our strength—the spirit of true partnership. We have a unique blend of business units that are centered on creating art (media/content/editorial) and applying science (data/technology). This rare combination enables us to integrate art and science to help customers deliver growth. For example, we have an incredibly detailed data taxonomy across editorial, ad serving and demand generation that shows a heat map of buying activity. That knowledge is then shared with our marketing services division to engage that audience for marketers in unique ways.

The third finding related to an understanding of how splintered our messaging was. In addition to the interviews, we conducted a series of global audits to understand the number of brands/accounts/messages we had. And we found that we were speaking about ourselves in very different ways. In aggregate, all of the research provided insights regarding a number of opportunities we had to not just be more compelling, but to actually tell the same story in a similar manner globally.

Whitler: How did you convert this insight into a new brand positioning and begin to implement it globally?

London: We started by defining the positioning and turning it into a manifesto, which gave rise to The IDG Story, which then became our new tagline, which is: Insights, Intent, & Engagement. And then we developed a global campaign. We needed all companies to sing from the same song sheet. We wanted to do this from an inspirational standpoint and not from a brand police standpoint and so we engaged brand ambassadors from multiple markets who weren’t marketers to create events globally (New Year’s Eve).

Whitler: Can you elaborate on the process of finding the brand ambassadors and their role?

London: This was an idea that Jenny Fahlbush, our VP of Marketing came up with. We wanted to identify authentic influencers in the organization at each of our separate global businesses—in addition to those people who were at the top of the hierarchy. This had to be more of a grassroots approach. We partnered with human resources and worked with each business unit head to identify the most influential and connected leaders. As a result, we ended up with brand ambassadors from almost every function, and a variety of different levels.

Once we identified the ambassadors, we asked for confidentiality and their time. We gave them a VIP view; they often heard about ideas even before senior leadership. In general, they were honored to be brought in on that level and felt a responsibility to make it a success. We found that employees wanted to be part of a bigger purpose and mission…to feel connected to something.

Whitler: How did you roll this out?

London: We created a welcome gift that was placed on every employee’s desk around the world, and included the “We are IDG book” (The IDG Story) and gifts representing art and science to reflect our positioning. We also rolled out new signage, new collateral and materials, websites and a video. This was then sent to all of our ambassadors. We then created social promotion around the launch. I did in person meetings around the world and talked about where we had come from and where we were going. Within one week we had everything updated. We wanted people to make the brand their own within a basic framework. This is as much a company/cultural transformation as well as a brand transformation.

Whitler: Can you talk more about the cultural transformation?

London: We were a company of micro-cultures. The goal was to come up with a single culture that unites IDG, but that one that didn’t homogenize us. This took roughly one year. We hired an outsourced agency to help develop the brand strategy and did all of the activation in house. We had to separate it given the fast pace that we wanted to roll this out.

Whitler: Are there any results you can share?

London: By week one of the campaign launch, Brand ambassadors and business leaders worked with Corporate Marketing to refresh 82 individual logos and more than 300 social accounts to reflect the new Brand.

By week two of the campaign launch, more than a dozen business units worked with Corporate Marketing to redesign websites and pages, customer content and collateral, images and other materials

Since we just had the rollout, most of the revenue results at this point are anecdotal, although we are seeing progress in opening new doors and opportunities that we previously didn’t have. Inbound leads have increased and we are seeing more traffic emanating from the corporate marketing function, suggesting that we are driving awareness and consideration. From an internal adoption perspective, it was fast. We now go to market with a single pitch deck—everybody synchronized in the right areas. But we need more time to be able to fully measure the impact.

Whitler: Lastly, given your unique perspective, what is “hot” right now in B2B marketing?

London: There are so many choices and ways to answer this. Imagine a consumer going to the shampoo aisle and there are 1500 bottles. It’s paralyzing. Many marketers are facing this same challenge. There are thousands of potential partners to leverage to solve business problems, but the large number of partners creates a management and integration problem. So, many marketers are looking for ways to reduce their number of partners and to increase their share (become more important) among those they do partner with. From where IDG sits, this is a positive development.

Relatedly, the buying team at B2B firms has changed and expanded. It now includes more functions (e.g., marketing, finance) and more people (can have 16 people involved). It means that as a B2B service provider you have to have higher engagement with more people at different stages. That makes account-based marketing so much more important. Just like B2C firms have focused on having a 360 view of the customer, B2B firms are now having to develop this same skill. And unfortunately, a lot of people are great at collecting at data but not as good at analyzing it and converting it into insight.